Kevin Drum has an opinion on election tactics: Come on, folks. Reid didn’t say I’ll bet Romney didn’t pay any taxes. He didn’t say he talked to someone familiar with high earners who told him Maybe Romney won’t release his returns because he didn’t pay any taxes. He made a flat statement of fact. He […]

Brad DeLong offers a long post on economists on the Romney team. THINGS WRONG WITH HASSETT, HUBBARD, MANKIW, AND TAYLOR, “THE ROMNEY PROGRAM FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY, GROWTH, AND JOBS” Notes on HHMT: Kevin Hassett, Glenn Hubbard, Gregory Mankiw, and John Taylor, “The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth, and Jobs” HHMT: We are presently in […]

by Tom aka Rusty RustbeltHealth Care Thoughts: Breast Cancer Battle Evidence-based medicine may not be as easy as it first sounds.  An opinion piece in the British Medical Journal (http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e5132) attacks the Susan G. Komen Foundation for over-hyping the value of mammography. This is not a new controversy, and experts have lined up on both sides of […]

From TaxProf blog: Kleinbard: Tax Fairness and Fairness in Tax Data Reporting Following up on yesterday’s post, WSJ: Taxing the Rich — The Facts:  Huffington Post:  Tax Fairness and Fairness in Tax Data Reporting, by Edward D. Kleinbard(USC):  The impetus for this little paper was an op-ed by Ari Fleischer in the Wall Street Journal […]

 by Run75441 Breaking The Healthcare Cost Curve Re-posted from 2/20/2010 Quite a bit of the commentary has been written on the question of how-to-rein-in rising healthcare costs and to slow costs to less than the rate of inflation. Massachusetts has been able to provide healthcare to its citizens but still struggles with keeping healthcare insurance […]

These two articles were juxtaposed in the NYT today.  At a casual glance they look contradictory, and in my experience in my personal sphere no one has asked for this to be explained in the political arena.  Maybe because I have a porcupine sort of personality.  We are apt to discuss parts more deeply but […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Cardiologists Gone Wild I have been waiting……. for a major federal investigation into unnecessary cardiology interventions. According to the NYT a major target are some HCA hospitals in Florida. The NYT focuses on HCA and for-profit, but I think this is a much broader problem. Unlike some […]

If my name was Harry Reid I would be reserving one question for Romney’s announcement of his VP pick: “Governor, how many years of tax forms did you request from Governor/Senator Jindal, Pawlenty, Portman?” And August 27th is not that far away. Particularly if the idea is to announce the VP pick prior to the […]

I want to draw AB readers’ attention to two of the most important op-ed pieces I’ve read in a while.  They address entirely different, but profoundly important, matters. One is Elizabeth Warren’s piece today in Politico, called Stop riggingsystem against small business. The other is Bill Keller’s column today in the New York Times, called […]

Eric Larson is interviewed about Social Security and his new book The People’s Pension: The War Against Social Security from Reagan to Obama (AK Press, Spring 2012): Eric Laursen is an independent journalist who’s been covering political and financial news for more than a quarter-century. He’s been studying Social Security for the past 15 years, […]